Marriage, children, and women's employment: What do we know?

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 122, Issue 12, 1999, Pages 22-31

  Cohen, Philip N ^a   Bianchi, Suzanne M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001443809     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. See Sara McLanahan and Lynne Casper, "Growing Diversity and Inequality in the American Family," in Reynolds Farley, ed., State of the Union: America in the 1990s. Vol. 2. Social Trends (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 1-46; and Daphne Spain and Suzanne M. Bianchi, Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment among American Women (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1996).
2. See Sara McLanahan and Lynne Casper, "Growing Diversity and Inequality in the American Family," in Reynolds Farley, ed., State of the Union: America in the 1990s. Vol. 2. Social Trends (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 1-46; and Daphne Spain and Suzanne M. Bianchi, Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment among American Women (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1996).
3. See Peter Gottschalk and Timothy M. Smeeding, "Cross-national Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Literature, June 1997, pp. 633-87; and Lynn A. Karoly and Gary Burtless, "Demographic Changes, Rising Earnings Inequality, and the Distribution of Personal Well-being, 1959-1989," Demography, August 1995, pp. 379-406.
4. See Peter Gottschalk and Timothy M. Smeeding, "Cross-national Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Literature, June 1997, pp. 633-87; and Lynn A. Karoly and Gary Burtless, "Demographic Changes, Rising Earnings Inequality, and the Distribution of Personal Well-being, 1959-1989," Demography, August 1995, pp. 379-406.
5. See Frank Levy, "Incomes and Income Inequality," in Reynolds Farley, ed., State of the Union: America in the 1990s. Vol. 1, Economic Trends (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 1-58; and Chinhui Juhn, Kevin M. Murphy, and Brooks Pierce, "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, June 1993, pp. 410-42.
6. See Frank Levy, "Incomes and Income Inequality," in Reynolds Farley, ed., State of the Union: America in the 1990s. Vol. 1, Economic Trends (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), pp. 1-58; and Chinhui Juhn, Kevin M. Murphy, and Brooks Pierce, "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, June 1993, pp. 410-42.
7. Annette Bernhardt, Martina Morris, and Mark S. Handcock, "Women's Gains or Men's Losses? A Closer Look at the Shrinking Gender Gap in Earnings," American Journal of Sociology, September 1995, pp. 302-28.
8. D. A. Cotter, J. M. DeFiore, J. M. Hermsen, B. M. Kowalewski, and R. Vanneman, "Same Data, Different Conclusions: Comment on 'Women's Gains or Men's Losses? A Closer Look at the Shrinking Gender Gap in Earnings,'" American Journal of Sociology, January 1997, pp. 1143-54.
9. Claudia Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
10. Chinhui Juhn and Kevin M. Murphy, "Wage Inequality and Family Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, January 1997, pp. 72-97.
11. The data are from Unicon Research Corporation (producer and distributor of CPS utilities), Santa Monica, CA. CPS'S from March 1962 to March 1998 are machine-readable data files. The surveys are conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
12. CPS data from January 1994 forward are not strictly comparable with data from earlier years because of changes in the design and methodology of the questionnaire. For a discussion of the effect of these changes on measures of hours in the labor force, see Philip L. Rones, Randy E. Ilg, and Jennifer M. Gardner, "Trends in hours of work since the mid-1970s," Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pp. 3-14.
13. Income is adjusted to 1997 dollars according to the Consumer Price Index. Women with no other family income are assigned a value of $1 before the logarithmic transformation. (See Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap, for a historical review of this effect. For more on modeling women's labor supply, see Mark Killingsworth and James J. Heckman, "Female Labor Supply," in Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard, Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 1 (New York, North Holland Press, 1986).)
14. Income is adjusted to 1997 dollars according to the Consumer Price Index. Women with no other family income are assigned a value of $1 before the logarithmic transformation. (See Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap, for a historical review of this effect. For more on modeling women's labor supply, see Mark Killingsworth and James J. Heckman, "Female Labor Supply," in Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard, Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 1 (New York, North Holland Press, 1986).)
15. Actually, it is the annual average of the percentage in the labor force in the week before the monthly CPS, not just the March estimates used in this article. (See Francine D. Blau, "Trends in the Well-Being of American Women, 1970-1995," Journal of Economic Literature, March 1998, pp. 112-65.
16. Spain and Blanchi, Balancing Act.
17. Women are considered employed if they responded with a number greater than zero to the question about how many hours they worked the previous week.
18. This finding is also documented in other research. (See Rones, Ilg, and Gardner, Trends in hours of work, p. 4; and Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, The Endless Day or the Flexible Office? Working Hours, Work-Family Conflict, and Gender Equity, report to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, June 1997, table 2.
19. This finding is also documented in other research. (See Rones, Ilg, and Gardner, Trends in hours of work, p. 4; and Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, The Endless Day or the Flexible Office? Working Hours, Work-Family Conflict, and Gender Equity, report to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, June 1997, table 2.
20. Jan Kamenta, Elements of Econometrics, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1997).
21. One portion of the tobit coefficients represents an effect on annual hours employed (for those working), and one portion represents an effect on the odds of being employed (for those who were not, cases were truncated at zero hours). When the primary concern is untruncated cases, however, the decomposition of these components is not necessary. See John F. MacDonald and Robert A. Moffitt, "The Uses of Tobit Analysis," Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1980, pp. 318-21.
22. Juhn, Murphy, and Pierce, "Wage Inequality."